Remove Advanced Mac Cleaner “Virus” (Jan. 2019 Update)

Why people consider Advanced Mac Cleaner “Virus”? How to remove the Advanced Mac cleaner “Virus”? You’ll find the answers to all of these question in this article.

Advanced Mac Cleaner IS NOT a Virus!

Many people consider Advanced Mac Cleaner a virus, since they cannot remember installing it themselves and it keeps pestering them with offers and pop-ups. This does not make Advanced Mac Cleaner a virus, as the program has not been known to actually cause any problems to the computer. Nevertheless quite a few people want to have it removed and sending it to the trash is usually not enough. This is also the reason why we’ve created this article.

There’s a term among the IT community for such software – PUP. The abbreviation stands for Potentially Unwanted Program. In the case of Advanced Mac Cleaner this means that some people like and use the program, others would rather have it removed. Obviously, this is a program that is distributed among Mac computers and Windows users should not have any problem with it. Formally, the Advanced Mac Cleaner (AMC for short) is supposed to help you boost your computer’s performance by fixing and repairing any system errors that may slow down your machine. Mac optimization software is often regarded to be of dubious value, as Mac OS X tends to be a lot less problematic than its Windows counterpart. There are multiple other programs that offer functionality similar to the Advanced Mac Cleaner, but little clear indication if any of these products are worth purchasing. In the specific case of Advanced Mac Cleaner there are a couple of issues that have caused the program to receive poor reviews and online feedback

The first thing you need to do is to Quit Safari (if it is opened). If you have trouble closing it normally, you may need to Force Quit Safari:

You can choose the Apple menu and click on Force Quit.

Alternatively you can simultaneously press ⌘ (the Command key situated next to the space bar), Option (the key right next to it) and Escape (the key located at the upper left corner of your keyboard).

If you have done it right a dialog box titled Force Quit Applications will open up.

In this new dialog window select Safari, then press the Force Quit button, then confirm with Force Quit again.

Close the dialog box/window.

WARNING! READ CAREFULLY BEFORE PROCEEDING!

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Once there, look at all the processes: if you believe any of them are hijacking your results, or are part of the problem, highlight the process with your mouse, then click the “i” button at the top. This will open up the following box:

Now click on Sample at the bottom:

Do this for all processes you believe are part of the threat, and run any suspicious files in our online virus scanner, then delete the malicious files:

Scan Results

Virus Scanner

Result

ClamAV

AVG AV

Maldet

File Name:

File Size:

File Type:

Detection ratio:

Scan Results

Virus Scanner

Result

ClamAV

AVG AV

Maldet

The next step is to safely launch Safari again. Press and hold the Shift key while relaunching Safari. This will prevent Safari’s previously opened pages from loading again. Once Safari is opened up, you can release the Shift key.

On the off chance that you are still having trouble with scripts interrupting the closing of unwanted pages in Safari, you may need to take some additional measures.

First, Force Quit Safari again.

Now if you are using a Wi-Fi connection turn it off by selecting Wi-Fi off in you Mac’s Menu. If you are using a cable internet (Ethernet connection), disconnect the Ethernet cable.

Re-Launch Safari but don’t forget to press and hold the Shift button while doing it, so no previous pages can be opened up. Now, Click on Preferences in the Safari menu,

and then again on the Extensions tab,

Select and Uninstall any extensions that you don’t recognize by clicking on the Uninstall button. If you are not sure and don’t want to take any risks you can safely uninstall all extensions, none are required for normal system operation.

The threat has likely infected all of your browsers. The instructions below need to be applied for all browsers you are using.

Again select Preferences in the Safari Menu, but this time click on the Privacy tab,

Now click on Remove All Website Data, confirm with Remove Now. Keep in mind that after you do this all stored website data will be deleted. You will need to sign-in again for all websites that require any form of authentication.

Still in the Preferences menu, hit the General tab

Check if your Homepage is the one you have selected, if not change it to whatever you prefer.

Select the History menu this time, and click on Clear History. This way you will prevent accidentally opening a problematic web page again.

Next, you will need to turn off the program and disable its process from the Activity Monitor.

Secondly, you will have to remove the program from your login items. That way it will no longer start when you turn on your Mac or simply login.

The previous two steps will stop the program from operating but we still advise you to outright remove it, even if it is no longer active in any way. This is probably the most annoying and time consuming part. Removing the app from your Applications folder and dragging AMC to Trash most likely won’t be enough (though you should still do that). You will probably also need to access several other folders and delete some of their contents. Here’s a list of those folders and their files and sub-folders that you’ll need to move to delete.

After you finish deleting, make sure that you empty Trash. This should be enough to remove Advanced Mac Cleaner from your PC.

Advanced Mac Cleaner uses aggressive marketing, which might involve warnings and threateningly-sounding prompts, even if everything may be OK. This kind of distribution strategy is nothing knew in this market and is employed by other companies, which offer similar products. Whether Advanced Mac Cleaner is better then the competition is a debatable topic. The fact remains, however, that the marketing tricks employed often aggravate the common user.

The second aspect is the program’s habit of installing alongside other software. This is also the reason people complain of having Advanced Mac Cleaner on their Macs without installing it themselves. Often all it takes is a moment of carelessness to automatically agree with the installation of AMC. We understand the need to reach as many potential clients as possible, but people that do not want Advanced Mac Cleaner should not have to go through the trouble of finding how to remove it!

Another aspect of Advanced Mac Cleaner we found annoying was the hassle you need to go through in order to uninstall the program. Most Mac programs can be sent to the trash and therefore easily uninstalled. You won’t be able to do the same with Advanced Mac Cleaner. The official method will require you to go to the Advanced Mac Cleaner help page and download a special uninstaller needed to remove the program. Also you’ll be asked to input the password of your administrator account in order to finish the operation.

In case you don’t want to use the official method or if it didn’t work for you for some reason here is an alternative solution instead.

You might have installed another app that had the Mac Cleaner bundled with it. The name you should be looking for in the Activity Monitor might not be “Advanced Mac Cleaner” but something entirely else. You should generally be able to identify if there’s any shady entry there and have it removed. Such unwanted programs are often known to hide themselves under different names.

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